The conservationist

Culture | Under the direction of Bruce Cole, the once-radical National Endowment for the Humanities has returned to the role of preserving America's heritage | Gene Edward Veith

Eliminate the National Endowment for the Humanities! That was a plank of the “Contract with America,” the manifesto with which the GOP became the majority party in the House of Representatives in 1995.

That year conservatives pushed to eliminate the NEH and its sister, the even more controversial National Endowment for the Arts. But the agencies survived, and a decade later they are bigger than ever. Republican goals have changed, too. Now GOP leaders want to keep the NEH—but make it a force for conserving America’s heritage instead of undermining it.

The National Endowment for the Humanities began in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiative. Proponents saw it as a parallel effort to the National Science Foundation, established in 1950 under President Truman. Just as the government funded scientific research in the national interest, it would fund projects in the humanities (that is, history, literature, language, philosophy, and the like).